Romans 5: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Paul says that people who are counted right with God through trust in Jesus have peace with God, and can even find joy in hard times, because suffering builds endurance that leads to hope. He points out that Christ died for people while they were still weak, ungodly, and enemies of God, which is how God shows his love. The second half of the chapter compares two men: through Adam, one act of disobedience brought sin and death to everyone, and through Jesus, one act of obedience brings a free gift that makes people right with God and gives them life. Paul adds that the law came in so that wrongdoing would increase, but grace increased even more.

Claim by Claim

1. 5:1
   • Believers have been justified by faith.
   • Justified believers have peace with God.
   • This peace with God comes through our Lord Jesus Christ.
2. 5:2
   • Through Jesus Christ we have obtained access by faith into this grace.
   • Believers stand in this grace.
   • We boast in the hope of the glory of God.
3. 5:3
   • We boast not only in that hope but also in afflictions.
   • We know that affliction produces endurance.
4. 5:4
   • Endurance produces tested character.
   • Tested character produces hope.
5. 5:5
   • Hope does not put to shame.
   • The love of God has been poured out in our hearts.
   • The love of God is poured out through the Holy Spirit.
   • The Holy Spirit has been given to us.
6. 5:6
   • We were without strength.
   • Christ died at the appointed time.
   • Christ died on behalf of the ungodly.
7. 5:7
   • Someone will hardly die on behalf of a righteous man.
   • On behalf of a good man someone might perhaps dare to die.
8. 5:8
   • God demonstrates his own love toward us.
   • We were still sinners when Christ died for us.
   • Christ died on our behalf.
9. 5:9
   • We have now been justified by his blood.
   • We shall be saved from wrath through him.
   • This salvation is a much greater certainty than the justification already given.
10. 5:10
    • We were enemies.
    • We were reconciled to God through the death of his Son.
    • God has a Son.
    • Having been reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.
    • This salvation is a much greater certainty than the reconciliation already given.
11. 5:11
    • We also boast in God.
    • We boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
    • Through Jesus Christ we have now received the reconciliation.
12. 5:12
    • Sin entered into the world through one man.
    • Death entered through sin.
    • Death spread to all men.
    • All sinned.
13. 5:13
    • Sin was in the world until the law.
    • Sin is not charged to account when there is no law.
14. 5:14
    • Death reigned from Adam until Moses.
    • Death reigned even over those who did not sin in the likeness of Adam's transgression.
    • Adam transgressed.
    • Adam is a type of the one who was to come.
15. 5:15
    • The free gift is not like the trespass.
    • The many died by the trespass of the one.
    • The grace of God and the gift in grace abounded to the many.
    • That gift in grace is by the one man Jesus Christ.
    • The abounding of grace is much greater than the effect of the trespass.
16. 5:16
    • The gift is not like what came through the one who sinned.
    • The judgment arose from one and led to condemnation.
    • The free gift arose from many trespasses and led to a verdict of righteousness.
17. 5:17
    • Death reigned through the one man by that one man's trespass.
    • Those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life.
    • They will reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.
    • Their reigning is a much greater certainty than the reign of death.
18. 5:18
    • Through one trespass the result came upon all men to condemnation.
    • Through one act of righteousness the result came upon all men to justification of life.
19. 5:19
    • Through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners.
    • Through the obedience of the one the many will be made righteous.
20. 5:20
    • The law came in alongside.
    • The law came in so that the trespass would increase.
    • Sin increased.
    • Where sin increased, grace abounded far more.
21. 5:21
    • Sin reigned in death.
    • Grace is to reign through righteousness unto eternal life.
    • This reign of grace is through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

5:1

"Justified" is a law-court word. It does not mean made good or made better; it means declared to be in the right, the verdict a judge hands down in a person's favor. That is what the rendering's "counted right with God" carries. Also, the Greek manuscripts here differ by a single vowel, giving either "we have peace" (a statement) or "let us have peace" (an exhortation). Translators have gone both ways; the King James and most modern versions take it as a statement.

5:2

"Access" translates a word used for being brought into the presence of a king by someone with the standing to introduce you. "Grace" is a gift handed freely to someone who has no claim on it, which is why the rendering says "undeserved kindness."

5:3

The King James uses three different English words, "rejoice" in verse 2, "glory" here, and "joy" in verse 11, for one Greek verb that means to boast or exult openly, not to feel quietly pleased. "Tribulation" means pressure or affliction of any kind, not specifically religious persecution. And "patience" in 1611 English meant staying power under load, the ability to hold up and keep going, not calm waiting.

5:4

"Experience" here translates a word for the tested quality of something that has been put through a trial and come out proved, the way metal is assayed to show it is genuine. The sense is not accumulated life experience.

5:5

"Maketh not ashamed" does not mean hope avoids embarrassment. Shame here is the public disgrace of having staked yourself on something that then failed you; the claim is that this hope will not be exposed as misplaced. "Holy Ghost" is the same as "Holy Spirit": in 1611 "ghost" simply meant spirit.

5:6

"Without strength" means helpless, without the power to do anything about one's own situation. "Ungodly" in this vocabulary describes people who give God no regard, not people who are unusually wicked.

5:7

"Peradventure" means perhaps. Readers have long disagreed about whether Paul is drawing a real distinction here between two kinds of person, a merely upright one and a generous or admirable one that someone might actually love enough to die for, or simply saying the same thing twice for effect. The Greek allows either.

5:8

"Commendeth" in 1611 English meant demonstrates or proves, not praises or recommends.

5:9

"His blood" is sacrificial shorthand for a death, standard in Jewish usage, where the blood stands for the life given up. "Wrath" in Paul's Greek often stands alone as a term for the settled judgment that falls on wrongdoing, which is why the King James can say simply "wrath" with no possessive.

5:10

"Reconciled" translates a word used of ending hostility between estranged parties, whether two people or two nations, and putting the relationship back on friendly terms.

5:11

"Atonement" is the only place the King James uses that word in the New Testament, and the Greek behind it is the ordinary word for reconciliation, the same idea as verse 10. In 1611 "atonement" still carried its original sense of at-one-ment, the patching up of a quarrel; the narrower modern sense of a sacrifice that pays for sin developed later, so the word now points readers somewhere the Greek does not.

5:12

The phrase rendered "for that all have sinned" is one of the most disputed in the letter. The two Greek words behind "for that" can be read as "because all sinned," as "with the result that all sinned," or, as some ancient Latin readers took it, "in whom," meaning in Adam, all sinned. Translators have gone all three ways, and the sentence is left unfinished in the Greek: Paul says "as" and then never supplies the matching "so," breaking off into the parenthesis of verses 13 to 17 before picking the thought up again in verse 18.

5:13

"The law" here means the law given through Moses at Sinai, the specific body of commands Israel received. "Imputed" is a bookkeeping word: entered on someone's account as a debt.

5:14

"Similitude" means likeness. Adam broke a direct, spoken command; the people between Adam and Moses had no such command to break, which is the point being made. "Figure" translates the Greek word typos, the impression left by a stamp or a die, hence a pattern or mold that a later thing matches. Note also that from here to verse 21 sin, death and grace are spoken of as though they were kings: they "reign."

5:15

"Offence" translates a word meaning a false step or blunder, a trespass. "Many" in this verse and in verse 19 renders a Greek phrase, "the many," which is an idiom for the whole mass of humanity considered together, not "a large number but not all." "Be dead" in 1611 English means died.

5:16

The vocabulary here is a courtroom's: "judgment" is the verdict handed down, "condemnation" the sentence against the accused, "justification" the verdict in the accused's favor. The contrast is arithmetical: the condemning verdict followed from a single offense, while the gift answers a whole accumulation of them.

5:17

"Reigned" means ruled as a king. Paul pictures death sitting on a throne over everyone, and then pictures people ruling in life instead.

5:18

"The righteousness of one" translates a single Greek word that can mean a righteous act, a legal requirement met, or a sentence of acquittal; readers disagree over whether it points to Christ's death in particular or to the whole course of his obedience. Note also that the Greek says "all" in both halves of the sentence, and how far the second "all" reaches, whether as wide as the first, has been argued over for centuries. The rendering leaves the phrasing as open as the Greek does.

5:19

"Made sinners" and "made righteous" translate a verb meaning to appoint, install or constitute someone in a position or standing, the word used for putting a person in an office. It is not the language of manufacture or of inward alteration. "Many" again renders "the many," the whole mass of people.

5:20

"Entered" translates a verb meaning came in alongside, a secondary arrival onto a scene already occupied, which is why the rendering says "was brought in." The Greek word behind "that" can express either purpose (the law came in in order to make wrongdoing increase) or result (the law came in, and the effect was that wrongdoing increased). The sentence is genuinely open between the two.

5:21

"Eternal life" translates a phrase meaning the life of the age to come, the life belonging to God's future world. Endless duration is part of the idea but not the whole of it; the emphasis falls on which age the life belongs to.